Someplace to stash my stuff
starkers's Articles
June 12, 2022 by starkers
The title says it all, our world is not what it could be or should be.  Therte are various 'so-called leaders who profess to be doing the 'right' thing to defend their countries, but in actual fact the truth is greed, imperial advancement and acquisition of resources the do not belong to them.  Russia is clearly guilty of this right now with the invasiuon of Ukraine, and China, under another despotic leader, is seeking to do the same in Taiwan and other Pacific nations who do NOT need ...
February 27, 2022 by starkers
I had ideas that I'd boost the graphics capability on my Threadripper rig, but when I saw that any kind of an upgrade on what I already have would cost $AU$1200 +, that was the end of that.  To get what I really wanted would have been  AU$1500 +, so I'm going have to make do with my RTX260. Anyone else think prices are too steep?
February 23, 2022 by starkers
I think the title [and sub-title] pretty much explains it....and BTW, this is not a political post, but rather a sad look at world events. I have been following the news on events regarding Russia's dealings with the Ukraine and it has me quite worried that a full scale invasion will trigger WWIII... and then there's the lunatic in the East showing aggression to Taiwan and other neighbours in Asia. Frankly, these are not the best of times to be alive, what with these two crackpots who coul...
November 22, 2020 by starkers
As the title suggests, Big Beastie underwent a complete makeover.  Turns out my Cooler Master 1200w PSU was the culprit with my Threadripper build and causing the mobo and CPU to short out.  It was throwing out 18v - 20v on the 12v rail, thus shorting out all that was connected to it.  I'm not expecting CoolerMaster to compensate me for the damage [about 1400 bucks] so I've moved on and Big Beastie now has an Intel 10th Gen Core i7 10700F LGA 1200 CPU mounted on an ASUS ROG Str...
November 7, 2020 by starkers
Now that he has lost his primary employment and source of income, it has been rumoured that Donald Trump has approached a world-wide hair transplant company for a new job.  Being the proud wearer of a thatched roof for some decades, and having spent hundreds of thousands on hair care, the executives at A&M may consider him for an ambassadorial role with the company. However, prior to signing him up, they may demand he either ditches his Twitter account or stops posting outrageous twe...
June 14, 2020 by starkers
I'm not having much luck with computers just lately.  My Big Beastie with the Ryzen Threadripper X2920 suddenly died and I had to take it into a techie to find out how and why.... being I have no diagnostic tools to speak of.  It turns out that the mobo just up and died on me.  Geez, it's not even 6 months old and it retired itself. Anyhow, that wasn't the end of it and I got some good news.  The techie sent it back to MSI and they promptly replaced it without question.&nb...
February 28, 2020 by starkers
It doesn't matter which conversion program I use, my PC freezes up during conversions,  Sometimes it is very early in the piece and sometimes as much as 60% to 70% has completed, which is really annoying because none of it appears in the conversion folder until 100% has completed, meaning the time and effort was wasted. If anyone can suggest what and why this may be happening I'd be most pleased as I have family awaiting their videos. TIA, Mark.  
January 28, 2020 by starkers
After moving interstate from Queensland to Tasmania, it came to pass that my primary PC wouldn't start.  I tried all sorts of things and no go, it was dead in the water.... or so I thought.  Upon removing some of the components to make way for a new build, I inadvertently touched the Start button on the motherboard and the machine started.  Turns out it was a faulty hard-drive, that once removed the machine started without issue.  Thing is, I had already set my heart on an AM...
September 5, 2018 by starkers
I was so pleased with myself once I had gotten my Cosmos II Big Beastie all set up with Win 10 and all of my most used programs.  It was a long time coming, what with mobo issues and the like, and it was fantastic to sit here in front of the 35" ultra wide screen connected to it....UNTIL MS decided to sneak in an update around 3.00 AM and borked quite a bit of stuff. I know it was around 3.00AM cos I walked past the machine to go to the toilet at 3.06 AM and noticed it was on and downloa...
May 27, 2018 by starkers
Yeah, as the title suggests, I'm having trouble with notepad.exe constantly reinventing itself.... no matter how many times I end the process in Taskmanager/Taskkill in CMD as administrator.  I no sooner end it and it is back pretty much instantly.  When this happens the CPU is running at over 90%, often at full tilt, 100%.  Not only that, it is writing files that I cannot find.  So far it has written over 30Gb of files I am unable to locate, and on a 120Gb SSD, I will run ou...
December 1, 2017 by starkers
Couldn't wait 'til after Christmas, which apart from Christmas Dinner and Christmas Pud is just another day for me these days. We'll just have a quiet dinner and day here among ourselves, and maybe visit or get a visit from my sister.  Other than that it'll be fairly non-eventful, which suits me fine. So anyway, I've been wanting to rebuild for a while now, and earlier this evening I decided to bite the bullet and order the parts I want: Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VI/ AMD Ryzen 1700 bun...
March 27, 2017 by starkers
At long last, after various hold-ups and distractions, days when I felt like crap with vertigo and arthritis, I finally got my AMD FX 8350 in the Thermaltake Level 10 case up and running again.  Admittedly, there were a few things I needed to do to it - like install an AMD GFX card to match the CPU brand-wise, swap out some RAM and HDDS, etc - but that was just one part of a larger project.  I've also been remodelling my desk and reorganising everything so I'm not using as much...
February 5, 2017 by starkers
Well the title say it all, I just found a portable apps manager in Liberkey and I'm finding quite useful indeed.  Not only does it keep all the apps handy in the one place, I've been able to uninstall several similar/equivelant programs to save space on my SSD, being the Liberkey versions tend to have a smaller footprint. The program is similar to Nirsoft's app manager, but I like Liberkey better.  Now for those of you who don't know about Liberkey, take a look here...
November 8, 2016 by starkers
Just when I thought I'd overcome the keyboard and mouse issues that came with Windows Update, Microsux goes a messes thing up again... and not through regular Windows Update... this time. Last night I was working on some video conversions when all of a sudden my machine BEGINS TO REBOOT: ''Working on Updates.  Do Not Turn Off Your Machine'' Like WTF? Windows Update is disabled.  No, it was done through Scheduled Maintenance which was running in the background ...
October 24, 2016 by starkers
Yup, you read it right, Apple created a one-handed pop out keyboard for both left and right handed users, yet it is locked away because Apple does not want people using it.  Like I said, how stupid is that? You can read more about it here. The only way an IOS user can access this feature is to jailbreak their phone, thus voiding the warranty and possibly messing up the phone entirely.  Perhaps a 3rd-party developer will come up with one.... IF Apple allows it to appear in...